And turn with me again this evening, if you will, in your Bibles to the first chapter of the book of Ezra, Ezra chapter one. And again, if you're using the Bibles in the seats, page 389. In the book of Ezra, we have the beginning of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, particularly Cyrus releases the captives from Babylon to go back and begin to rebuild the temple of God. And we saw this morning that God stirred Cyrus' heart to give this declaration and to grant this freedom. And we're gonna look in more particular detail this evening to God stirring the hearts of his own people. And as we do this, we're gonna look for Christ, and we're gonna look for promises and progress, we're gonna look for themes and types, and we're gonna look to compare and to contrast how God works in the Old Testament and how God works in the New Testament in his redemptive work. Let me ask you before we read, and we'll just be reading one verse, so we'll be considering a broader portion of the text, what motivates you to do things? More specifically, what motivates you to do the things that God wants you to do? Sometimes, and it makes us nervous, I think those of us who are here, people talk about God speaking to them. And you've perhaps heard it said, if you want to hear God speaking, read the Bible. And if you want to hear God speaking audibly, read the Bible out loud. because God primarily speaks to us by His Word, but then by God's Spirit, He applies that Word to our life. And it's in that way that God motivates us to do the things that we should do, to turn away from the things that we should not do. God moves our spirits even as he did hear his people in Ezra chapter 1 verse 5. And so again reading just one verse and then we'll seek the Lord in prayer and consider his word together. Ezra 1 5. Then rose up the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. Having heard from God in His word, please join me as we pray. Our Father in heaven, in this short verse, and in its context, and in the whole of your word, we want to come and learn from you We want to come and see more about ourselves, but we particularly want to come and see more about Christ. And so might it be that we would see our Savior in your word as we consider it together this evening. Guide our hearts by your spirit, we pray, amen. So what we have here is that God stirred up his people's spirits. And he did that, it seems, initially to overcome natural reluctance. We need to consider what's taking place. We read at the end of 2 Chronicles 36, the destruction of Jerusalem, the carrying away of the rest of the Israelites into captivity. a carrying away into captivity in Babylon that began many years earlier. We mentioned last week that Daniel was one of the first carried over to Babylon in about 605 BC. And so for some 70 years, God's people had been singing or saying what Psalm 137 says, how can we sing the Lord's song on foreign soil? How can we who are in captivity in Babylon sing praises to our God who we knew back in Jerusalem? Now God is not bound. When Solomon dedicated the temple that the Babylonians tore down, he said, this temple cannot contain you. Not even the highest heavens can contain you. But for these people, their primary experience of the corporate assembly with the people of God was in Jerusalem. And so for 70 years, They had been away from that assembly. Psalm 137 goes on to express the longing of the faithful, of the people of God. If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem as my highest joy. That was the longing expressed by the people of God. And then Cyrus said, go. And many went, but not anywhere near all went. Only those whose spirit God stirred. They had freedom to go back to Jerusalem. We might expect them As Cyrus says, whoever among you is a Jew, your God be with you and go back and rebuild his house. And we might have expected them to have the attitude of Psalm 126 that we're gonna sing at the end of the service this evening. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. And we use that kind of an expression even today. When something wonderful is happening, Pinch me, I must be sleeping. This is too wonderful, it must be a dream. And the psalmist goes on to write, our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy. And the people said about us, the Lord has done great things for them. And we said about the Lord, the Lord has done great things for us. And the expectation that I would have as I read the account of God's people especially those who remained faithful, that when Cyrus said, go, there would have been no holding back. It would have been like kids heading to the food line who weren't told, wait for your mom and dad. There's food, go have it. The expectation that I have when I get to Ezra 1 is they would be like a shot out of a cannon. They would so long to be back and to build the temple again so that they might have the experience that many of them had had. But we have to remember, as I had mentioned this morning, many of the people of God at this time had been born in captivity. Many of them had never lived in Jerusalem. We might expect that it would be the young who would have the strength to make the journey and then to take up the work of building the temple again that would go, but they'd never been there. They'd perhaps heard stories from their parents and their grandparents. In many ways, it might be like a second or third generation American citizen going back to their parents' or their grandparents' home country. It might not have the appeal to them. For whatever reason, and we don't know the reason exactly, We're told in chapter two that 42,000 and about 500 went back. Not an insignificant number, it's more than us. But there seemed to be a natural reluctance. They didn't, it seems, want to go until God stirred their spirits to go. When they went into captivity, they were told through the prophet Jeremiah, pursue the peace of the city to which I am taking you and in their peace, you will have peace. And so it may well be that they had come to enjoy peace and prosperity even in captivity in Babylon. Some may have looked at the task, we're gonna go back and we're gonna deal with a burnt temple. and a torn down wall. And we see in the task of rebuilding the temple in Ezra and the task of rebuilding the wall in Nehemiah that it was hard work. And there may have been some who just said, it's too hard. I don't want to work that hard. We don't know the reason. It may have been, as one writer suggested, that they valued material comforts more than their spiritual heritage, that they put their ease before the Lord's work. All we know for sure is that they needed their hearts stirred by God to do the work that he had given them to do. Words translated here in the ESV, the Lord stirred their hearts. In the Christian standard, it's that he roused their hearts It's used to waken someone up. In fact, we sang about Leviathan and as God interacts with Job at the end of the book of Job, he says, who can rouse or stir Leviathan? In other words, which of you is brave enough to go wake up this sea monster of some kind and face, perhaps, his wrath? The sense of what's going on here is God stirring up his people's hearts, awakening them, rousing them. It's time to get up and it's time to go. Maybe you have trouble waking up in the morning. Maybe for you kids, your mom or dad has to come in and maybe even shake you a little bit. It's time to wake up. It's time to wake up. It's time for breakfast or it's time for school. Sometimes I long for those days. It's hard for me to sleep in anymore. I often wake up in the wee hours of the morning, but I do go to bed in the wee hours of the evening. But I can remember when I was 19 years old or so, I was living with a Christian family from our church, and I slept on a top bunk in a bedroom, and my alarm clock was on the dresser across the bedroom for the bunk bed. And that was intentional, because it was hard for me to wake up. But I found the reality is I could get out of that bunk bed, go across the room, turn off the alarm, come back to my bed, get back in the bunk bed, and not even remember that I had wakened. God here is saying to his people, wake up. Wake up. It's time to get up. It's time to go. And so when we think about that in our own lives, perhaps we need to be regularly praying, God, help me to do what I'm able to do but I'm reluctant to do. Stir up my spirit to do the work that you want me to do. And sometimes that will happen as we're interacting with the word of God. In fact, that ought to be, that kind of a prayer, I'm not saying those particular words, ought to be our heart's attitude whenever we come to the word of God, whether it's preached, whether we're reading it in our family worship, in our private worship. God, help me do what I'm able to do but I'm reluctant to do. Stir up my spirit to work for you. One of the biblical prayers that I pray on a regular basis is Jesus' instruction in Matthew 9, where he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field. And whenever I pray that, I desire that God would give me also the heart of Isaiah the prophet. who when confronted with the holiness of his God and the need for one to be sent, said, here am I, send me. See, I don't wanna just pray, God, would you send other people out into your harvest field? Now I wanna say, God, you've said that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Would you send me and other laborers into your harvest field? Would you help me do what I'm able to do, but might at times be reluctant to do? Stir up my spirit to work for you. God stirred up his people's spirits to overcome natural reluctance, and then secondly, to move them to give. For not only did they go, but they also gave. We looked this morning at how Cyrus gave. He offered to pay for the reconstruction of the temple from the Babylonian treasury. But if we go to chapter 2 and verses 68 and 69, we read this. Some of the heads of the families, when they came to the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, made freewill offerings for the house of God to erect it on its site. According to their ability, they gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 derricks of gold and 5,000 minas of silver and 100 priest's garments." I'm not sure how much money that would be in our day, but It doesn't seem like an insignificant amount of giving. And God moved his people's spirits. He stirred up their spirits to move them to give. One writer who wrote about that text pointed out four different things about their giving. He says, it was prompt, even before they built their own homes, they gave for the giving of the temple of God. It was spontaneous, that is, they wanted to give, and they gave of a free will offering. In fact, you'll find free will in the Bible, but most often attached to offerings, given as a free will offering. Thirdly, he said, it was thoughtful. They gave what they could, And then he said, it was generous. They gave what they could. In other words, they didn't give more than they could, but they didn't give less than they could. Now, I'm not trying to get more money in the offering plate. I think God has provided through the generosity of his people for the work of the church here. But I do think it's worth reflecting as we consider the people of God and their hearts being stirred to give to the work of God, to say, am I as generous as God has been generous with me? Am I as generous as God has been generous with me? God stirred up his people's spirits to overcome natural reluctance, to move them to give, and then he gave them the particular task to rebuild God's house. To rebuild the house of God that was burned to the ground, that was destroyed by the enemies of God. so that as God moved their spirits, they could express with the psalmist the kind of longing for the house of God that our Psalm of the Month speaks about, Psalm 84a. I long for the Lord's house. I pant for the Lord's courts. I faint. It's this longing, this desire, this wanting to be part of the building of the house of God. Now we might be inclined to read that and say, well, that was then. We don't have to build a temple now, do we? No, we don't. Except the temple that is the people of God, the spirit of God dwells in. But what we find is not something that applied only then, but something that is useful for us now. All scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. And so as we read about God stirring up his people's spirits, we might be inclined to say, God, stir my spirit. Stir my spirit to do your work. But greater than that, more significantly than that, we do find Christ. And I think we find him primarily in comparison and in the themes that are repeated in the work of Christ in the New Testament that we read here in Ezra chapter one. namely that Christ promises his spirit to stir up your spirit. Christ promises his spirit to stir up your spirit. Now perhaps you've been puzzled at times when the scripture speaks about God's spirit or Christ's spirit. And I think the way the scripture uses that term, it's to be understand that Christ's spirit is in fact who we know as the third person of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit. Christ told his disciples, I'm gonna return to heaven and it's gonna be better for you that I go because I will send the Comforter and he will be with all of you. You see, when Christ was on this earth, though he didn't have all the same limitations that we might have, when a crowd tried to throw him over the cliff, he walked through their midst. But he willingly submitted himself to the boundaries of human nature existence. But he told his disciples, I will go, and I will send my spirit to be with you. You might be familiar with the division between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, and I don't want to get into a lot of church history and church theology, but who sends the Holy Spirit? We understand that the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. The Eastern Church said only the Father. But we read Jesus speaking to his disciples and he says this. the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you everything that I've told you." In that text, in John chapter 14, Jesus attributes the coming of the Holy Spirit to the work of the Father. A chapter later as he continues that discourse in chapter 15, he says, when the counselor comes, the one I will send you from the father, the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father, he will testify about me. And so we believe that Christ sends his spirit, that God the father and God the son together send the spirit of God to stir up your spirits. Christ promises his spirit to stir up your spirit. And we see some parallels, though it's not quite as matching as the outline was this morning, for those of you who've fallen along. But still the same sorts of themes. Christ promises his spirit to stir up your spirit to waken dead souls. Jesus said that the Spirit, when he came, would convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And if you're in Christ, you know of that awakening. You know of that recognition of your own sin. You know of coming to understand that the only righteousness that you had a hope of holding up before a holy God was a righteousness given to you by faith. And you came to understand that the judgment that would come would be a judgment from which you were exempted by faith in Christ because Christ underwent that judgment for you. And for that to happen, the Spirit of God had to awaken your dead souls. Now that's, it seems like a mixed metaphor, if you will. You don't wake up a dead person. And yet that is language that Jesus used. You'll remember when his friend Lazarus fell sick and because Jesus loved Mary and Martha he waited to go until Lazarus had died. And then he said to his disciples our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I will go and waken him. And no less of a miracle had to take place for you to have your dead soul awakened by the one who can breathe life into the dead, by the one who can call things that are not such that they are. You see, it's the Spirit of Christ who applies the gospel to those who respond in faith. Paul writes to Titus, when the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for man appeared, he saved us. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and the renewal by the Holy Spirit. It's the Spirit of God who awakens dead souls to respond to the gospel. And so that leaves a question that we need to ask. Has he awakened me? Do I know Christ savingly through the work of the Spirit for me? Has my dead soul been brought to life through the application of the gospel? Christ promises His Spirit, to send His Spirit to stir up your spirit. And the first thing that has to happen is for your dead soul to be awakened. And all of us who are Christ can say that is what happened. And we may not completely understand it, but that's okay. We have to come to be able to confess what the scripture says is true, that Christ died for my sins. Christ promises His Spirit, secondly, to stir up your spirit to engage His people, and I wrestled with what word to use there. I thought about equip, but it sounded too much like this morning's sermon as I was working on these texts. I thought about enliven, and that might have been a legitimate word, but I chose the word engage, and what I mean by that is not the engagement that we think of that comes before marriage, but to get us in gear. to get us to work in the things that he saved us to do. You see, Christ's spirit saves us for good works, and he moves our hearts to serve him. We read in Acts chapter one, as Jesus is getting ready to be ascended into heaven, he says to his disciples, you will receive power. You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jesus told his disciples when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will receive power and you will be my witnesses. He doesn't say I want you to be my witnesses, and I want you to have power. He says, I am gonna send my spirit to stir up your spirit to be engaged in the work that I have given you to do. And we can read over and over about the work that the spirit does in the people of God to stir us up to be engaged in the work that God has given us to do. In Acts chapter 4 we read that the believers are given boldness by the Spirit in the face of persecution. Really very parallel to what we read in Luke that when you are opposed the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say. In Romans chapter 8, those whose spirits are stirred up to be awakened to salvation are given freedom from sin and death. They're convinced in their spirits by Jesus' spirit, as we read in the call to worship, that they are God's children. In Romans chapter 12, those who are in Christ are being transformed to be fervent in serving the Lord in the body of Christ. In Romans 15, they're being given, they're being made to overflow with hope by the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 12, those believers, us believers, are given a place in the body of Christ, in His church. In 2 Corinthians 3, they're enabled to see the Spirit, making them more like Jesus. being more like, as I mentioned this morning, the moon reflecting the light of the sun, the S-O-N, Jesus himself. In Galatians 5, they're given fruit that transforms their lives. In Galatians 6, they're equipped to help other Christians battling with sin. In Ephesians 2, they're being built into God's temple. In Ephesians 4, they're helped to be united with one another. In Ephesians 6, they're armed for battle. And we could go on and on, and I would encourage you as you read the scripture to look for ways in which God engages his people in the work that he stirs them up to do. Not only did Christ promise his spirit to stir up your spirit, to awaken dead souls, to engage his people, but in many ways parallel to what we read in Ezra chapter one, to populate his house. To build and to be built into the house of God. Cyrus had a particular task that God anointed him to do. Go and build the Lord's house in Jerusalem. Jesus says go and build the Lord's house in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. Now I don't necessarily think of Colorado Springs as the uttermost parts of the earth, but perhaps from the perspective of Jerusalem, it's closer than we might think. And so how is it that the Lord Jesus is stirring your hearts to build his house here in Colorado Springs? There's a danger as we think of God moving his people because we might be inclined to say well God's not moving me. Jesus promises His Spirit to move your spirits. And so the question is not, is God moving me? But how is God moving me? How is the Spirit of Christ moving me? And so you who are part of this congregation of Springs Reformed Church, Why did God move your hearts to be involved in the building of this house, of this congregation, of this church? And what is God wanting of you in your service to him in the context of this church? Because I can assure you on the promise of Christ that he is sending his spirit to move your spirits to serve him in the building and the populating of his house. And if you're here and you're a regular part of this church and you're not a member, I might encourage you to think, how is God moving your heart to be involved in the building of this church? You see, it's in the people of God that God builds his church. You're familiar with the kid's little finger play. Here's the church. Here's the steeple. Open the door and see all the people. But I don't really like it that way. I think of it this way. Here's the church and here's the steeple. Open the door. Oh, here's the church. It's the people. You see, the Spirit of God, sent by God the Father and God the Son, moves you and me to be part of the building and the populating of His church. Christ promises His Spirit to stir up your spirit, to believe the gospel, and to serve Him, and to build His house. May it be that we will respond to the movement of God in our spirits with joyful service to him. Please pray with me. Our Father in heaven, continue the work that you have begun. Use us to do things that might move us out of our comfort zone, that might, we think, be impossible, and nothing is impossible with you. Lord, I don't know in what particular ways you might move these, your people, but I believe that that is the work that you are doing. Jesus, I believe that that is the work that you are doing through your spirit to us. And so might we be attentive as we come to your word, as we think about the things that we can do in service to Christ and his church, but perhaps we're reluctant to do. And would you stir us up, would you awaken us, would you send us out to do the work that you've called us to do, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.